MORPHOLOGY

September 16, 2019

 WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN WE SAY
WE KNOW THE WORDS IN A
LANGUAGE?
• What does it mean when we say we know the words in a language?
 WANO
• Yoktandianendarakbaneqannovavinewiganakta
• How many words?
• yok ta, ndi, an endarak baneq, an novavi ne wiganak ta, ndo dogwe, yak
yugo tetik-o.
• 'Now, this, regarding my birth, that my fathers came out, their staying in
caves, I will tell that later.' or 'Now, about my birth. About (how) my fathers
came out, and the life in caves, I will tell later.
 WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN WE SAY
WE KNOW THE WORD ‘STUDENT’?
• Pronunciation
• Meaning
• Spelling
• Word class, grammatical category, lexical category, parts of speech
 LEXICON
• Words and their information (meaning, pronunciation, spelling, grammatical
class) are stored in the mental dictionary (Greek: lexicon)
• I love you
• You are the love of my life
• Sa sayang ko
• *Sa pena ko
• Ini sa pu sayang
• Ini sa pu pena
• Lexicon: also refers to the vocabularies of a language
 CONTENT AND FUNCTION WORDS
• Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs: CONTENT WORDS
• Content words: carry meaning, have clear lexical meaning and obvious concepts
• Also called open classes
• Why?
• We hear and use words such as:
• I will inbox you
• I will messenger you
• Facebook
• Whatsapp
• Vlog
 CONTENT AND FUNCTION WORDS
• Conjunctions, preposition, articles, and pronouns: function words
• Function words: specify grammatical relations, connect the content words
into a larger grammatical context
• Also called closed classes
• why?
• Examples: English pronouns I, me, mine, she, he, you, etc
• The book of yours
• it’s raining
• The archbishop found it advisable
 MORPHEME
• What is the most basic unit of meaning? Is it word?
A B
desireable undesirable
likely Unlikely
inspired Uninspired
happy Unhappy
developed undeveloped
 MORPHEME
• Is word the most basic unit of meaning? What about parts of words like un- in
the table?
• In all the words in the table un- means the same thing: ‘not’
• Un- can’t be broken further into smaller parts, can it?

Phone Phonology Phoneme

Phonetic Phonologist Phonemic
Phonetics Phonological Allophone
Phonetician Telephone Euphonious
phonic Telephonic Symphony
 MORPHEME
• The form phon is the same in all the words
• The meaning is related to sound
• Can we further subdivide phon into smaller parts? Ph? On?
 MORPHEME
• Words have internal structure that is rule-governed
• Uncertain, unbeliveable, ungrammar
• ‘not certain, not believeable, not grammatical’
• *certainun, *beliveableun, *grammarun
• We form a negative by prefixing, not suffixing
• Word is not the basic unit of meaning
• Morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit in a language system
• Morphology: the study of the internal structure of words and of the rules by
which words are formed
 MORPHOLOGY
• Morphology: morph + -ology
• Morph: form
• -ology: branch of knowledge
• Morphology: the branch of knowledge concerning word forms
• Morphology also refers to our linguistic knowledge of the words in our own
language
 ONE MORPHEME

• Child
• Desire
• Meditate
 TWO MORPHEMES
• ‘childish’ child + -ish
• ‘desirable’ desire + -able
• ‘meditation’ meditate + tion
 THREE MORPHEMES
• ‘childishness’ child + -ish + -ness
• ‘desirability’ desire + -able + -ity
 FOUR MORPHEMES
• ‘undesireability’ un- + desire + -able + -ity
• ‘gentlemanliness’ gentle + man + -li + -ness
 MORE THAN FOUR MORPHEMES
• ‘ungentlemanliness’ un- + gentle + man + -li + -ness
• ‘antidisestablishmentarianism anti- + dis- + establish + -ment + -ari + -an + -ism
 MORPHEME
• Can consist of a single sound
• a- in amoral, asexual meaning ‘without’
• Can consist of a single syllable: examples?
• Two syllables: examples?
• Three syllables: examples?
• Four or more syllables: examples?
 FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES
• Free morphemes: can stand alone
• e.g. Boy, child, desire, gentle, man
• Bound morphemes: cannot stand alone but must attach to another
morpheme (base)
• e.g. –ish, -ness, -ly, pre-, trans-, un-
• These bound morphemes are affixes
• Affixes may attach at the beginning, the end, in the middle, or both at the
beginning and end of a word
 PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES
• Prefixes occur before other morphemes
• E.g. Un-(uncertain), pre- (premeditate)
• Suffixes occur after other morphemes
• E.g. –ish (childish), -ness (happiness)
 INFIXES
• Infixes are inserted into other morphemes
• Bontoc, Philippines

Nouns/adjectives verbs
fikas ‘strong’ fumikas ‘to be strong’
kilad ‘red’ kumilad ‘to be red’
fusul ‘enemy’ fumusul ‘to be an enemy’
 INFIXES

Nouns/adjectives verbs
fikas ‘strong’ fumikas ‘to be strong’
kilad ‘red’ kumilad ‘to be red’
fusul ‘enemy’ fumusul ‘to be an enemy’
 INFIXES
• Can you think of infixes in Indonesian?
• English?
 CIRCUMFIXES
• Circumfixes attach to other morphemes both initially and finally
• They always come together
• Chickasaw, Oklahoma
Affirmative Negative
chokma ‘he is good’ ikchokmo ‘he is not good’
lakna ‘it is yellow’ iklakno ‘it is not yellow’
palli ‘it is hot’ ikpallo ‘it is not hot’
tiwwi ‘he opens (it)’ ..................? ‘he does not
opens (it)’
• German
lieben ‘to love’ geliebt ‘loved’
machen ‘to make’ gemacht ‘made’
kaufen ‘to buy’ gekauft ‘bought’
 BASE, STEM, AND ROOT
• Complex words can consist of a morpheme root and one or more affixes
• Paint ‘painter’
• Read ‘reread’
• Ceive ‘conceive’
• Ling ‘linguistics’
• Some roots can stand alone, some can’t stand alone
• Roots in Chickasaw circumfix
• Roots in Arabic and Hebrew
• Nouns and verbs derive from three consonantal root
• E.g. Root for ‘write’ is ktb

katab ‘he wrote’

kaatib ‘writer’
kitaab ‘book’
kutub ‘books’
• Root + affix = stem
 BASE
• Base is a cover name for root or stem to which an affix is attached
• A base can be:
• A plain root: bottle, vanilla, lamp
• More than one plain root: window-seat, bell-jar
• A root + one or more affixes: ex-boyfriend, sweaty
• More than one base (root+affixes): stand-offish, bluey-green, Afro-American;
(multiple bases): railway station, ice-cream saleman
• Bound roots cannot stand alone and only have meaning when combined
with other morphemes
• English root, e.g. read
• English base, e.g. readable ˃ readability
• Latinate roots
• E.g. –ceive in receive, conceive, perceive, deceive
• E.g. –mit in permit, commit, submit, remit, transmit, admit
 RULES OF WORD FORMATION
• Morphology: the study of the internal structure of words and of the rules by
which words are formed
• Watch the following video!
• You might be confused, or you might laugh at the joke in the video.
• The words: cangkulisasi, panenisasi are new but you recognise them and
their meanings.
• Cangkul + -isasi
• Panen + -isasi
• Kebun + -isasi
• Our morphological knowledge includes: knowledge of morphemes,
pronunciation, meaning, word class, and rules of combining these
morphemes
• We use our morphological knowledge to create new words
• We use our morphological knowledge to recognise new words
• Panen → verb
• Kebun → noun
• Cangkul → noun
• Verb + -isasi → the process of ‘verb’
• Noun + -isasi → the process of ‘noun’
 DERIVATIONAL AND INFLECTIONAL
MOPHOLOGY
• Beauty + -fy = beautify
• Organize + -tion = organization
• Sing + -er = singer
• Black + -en = blacken
• Morphemes such as –fy, -tion, -er, -en are called derivational
morphemes.
• When added to a base: a new word with a new meaning is
derived
• Linguists: list of derivational morphemes and their meaning in our lexicon as
well as the rules for combining them
• Derived words: new words resulted from adding a derivational morpheme
• Dark + -en → darken
• Great + -ness → greatness

Derivational morphemes
Have clear semantic/lexical meaning
May change the word class of the derived words
Some productive, many nonproductive
• -s as in he eats rice for breakfast
• -ed as in he washed the dishes last night
• -ing as in he is speaking to his wife now
• -s as in his wife eats two apples
• Morphemes such as –s, -ed, -ing are inflectional morphemes
• These are bound morphemes that have grammatical functions but no
lexical meaning
• They mark properties such as tense, person, number, plurality
Inflectional morphemes

Have grammatical functions but no lexical meaning

Do not change the word class

Apple (noun) → apples (noun)

Show relationship between parts of a sentence

he eats rice for breakfast